Keene on Education: 2013

Friday, December 27, 2013

A New Year in a New Home

So I haven't been posting at all lately as I've been literally buried in new home renovations. My refrigerator was in the dining room, my stove in the living room and piles of tile and boxes covered the floor. But FINALLY we have gotten to a point where we have some clean rooms and I can begin to get back to some sense of normalcy - which means some time for blogging. So I thought I'd start by showing you what kept me away from the keyboard.

Here are some of the pictures of our renovation. The before and current after are at the end side by side. I say current cause we still have a lot of finishing touches to make.

Reno Pictures:

Breaking out the old tile

Painted spindles

Walls painted, ugly carpet gone, wainscoting installed

hardwood up, trim primed

Oh no! A second layer of ugly floor!

My sister in law keeping me safe

OK - all the floors are up and walls are painted!

And the first tile goes down

Four days later and we only made it down the hall!

And here we are now 3 months later. For fun: see if you can find my pups, Webber, who somehow managed to get into every after picture.

In the kitchen, we changed the floor from laminate hardwood to porcelain tile, painted the trim white, changed all the light fixtures and brought in our furniture.

Since I posted, we added a new back splash to the kitchen.

We didn't do too much in the den. Just painted the trim, spindles, and walls. Added our furniture, mounted the TV and of course our Christmas tree.

Originally we were going to leave the title and put darker hardwood in the kitchen, but as time went on so did my hatred for the cream tile. I am so glad we decided on the tile for hallway and kitchen.

The dining room is definitely my favorite room in the house. It turned out exactly as I imagined! I can't wait to get some artwork on the walls and the chandelier up. I ended up spray painting the gold one that is in the before picture stainless steel. It came out so good! Now I just need to get hubby to hang it. It will be a bit of a job because we need to move it over as our table isn't in the center of the room like theirs was.

And finally, my office is the most "work in progress" on the first floor. I plan on painting the desk black and all my artwork still needs to go on the walls and I need to put the window panels back in. I literally just unpacked my boxes this week!

So there it is, the last 3 months of my life! Hopefully now that we have reached a little bit of a stopping point I will be better about posting what I am doing in the classroom. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Pirate Subtraction

We just begun learning about subtraction and I found some great pirate links to help make it more engaging for my little buccaneers.

For the launch we watched When You Subtract with a Pirate. As we watched the video, students worked on their slates to solve the problems that arouse within the song.

Then we did some story problems using the pirate theme to practice writing and solving subtraction.

We ended the lesson playing Pirate Treasure Subtraction. Using these adorable work mats I found on sparklebox.com. I allowed the students to use real coins which they really got excited about. We shared our some of our answers using our best pirate voices.

Both my kids and I really enjoyed this pirate filled day of subtraction!

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Character and Setting Using Text Evidence

So, as I began writing my first fiction unit for the new year, and planning for my first observation with a new principal, I really wanted to make sure I highlighted the CCSS and our school goal, differentiation.

For this lesson I focused the standard on RL.1.3 describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

I was finding that most of the students are relying heavily on their schema when answer questions about key details in the text, rather than specific text evidence. To tackle this problem I decided I would provide my students with text statements and they would then sort those words based on whether they were describing the characters or the setting.

I chose to use a listed exemplar from the appendix within CCSS - Over in the Meadow. I spread this lesson over three days. Below is the visual from Houghton Mifflin Treasure's series. This is the version I used with my students.

Day 1 : We read the first 3 stanzas of the poem and discussed the change of setting through out the poem - how the characters all were in the meadow, but in different areas of the meadow. We sorted our evidence by what we saw (picture clues) and what we heard (text clues) to help us decide where and when the different parts of the poems where taking place. Below is a picture of the anchor chart I used.

Day 2: We reread the same 3 stanzas, this time I had written words from the text on the post-its and purposely distributed words to students. They walked to enlarged posters of the three stanzas and placed their post-it either on the setting or the character, based on which it was describing. For example, slow would have been placed on the picture of the turtle (character) or night would be placed in the sky (setting) of the owl stanza. We did this lesson again focusing on how we can infer more about the characters and setting. The green post-its are from the text, the blue ones are inferential descriptive words.

Day 3: This time other stanzas were selected for independent practice. I also D.I'ed these by having some student's using rebus readers and other using ones that had no picture clues. They read their stanza and then sorted words from the text under the titles - character and setting.

You can pick up a copy of the three different student formative sheets at my TPT store for FREE.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Star of the Week

So I've revamped my Star of the Week procedures with some of the wonderful ideas from my new team. Now students will be highlighted each day of their week.

Monday - Star of the Week Book - students fill out a cloze sentence book about some of their favorite things. It is then posted in the classroom.

The rest of the class will visit it throughout the week to complete a compare and contrast sheet. They will fill out a template that says how they are similar and different from the star. These papers will then be compiled into a book that the star can then take home.

Tuesday - Mystery Box - Students will place an item of personal importance inside the mystery box and read aloud 3 clues to the class. Students will attempt to guess what is hidden inside the box. After revealing the item, the star will explain it's importance with the class.

Wednesday: Guessing Jar - the star fills the jar with a group of items and presents it to the class. The rest of the class will complete the guessing jar notebook, where they estimate the number inside. We will then count out the items using groups of ten.

Thursday: Poem - student will bring in a poem of their choice to read to the class to practice their speaking and fluency skills.

Friday: Guest Reader and Favorite Book - Students share a favorite book with the class and have the option to invite in a family member or friend to read the book to the class.

So, overall I am loving this new format, it fits perfectly within the 10 minute gap between lunch and specials and really makes the students feel special. Plus - what a perfect way to develop speaking and listening skills!

Pick up the templates in my TPT store for FREE!

Saturday, August 31, 2013

2013 Classroom Reveal

So it's taken a little longer to get this up, as I have not only been moving into a new classroom but a new home as well. But here they are, pictures of my classroom this year.